Workers cleaning up the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, are getting sick, leaders of the nation’s largest rail unions said Wednesday — as they pressed the Biden administration for more safety measures.
The presidents of a dozen unions met with administration officials to state their case and express concern — as a new independent study found that the chemicals spilled in East Palestine during the Feb. 3 derailment could pose long-term health risks.
“My hope is the stakeholders in this industry can work towards the same goals related to safety when transporting hazardous materials by rail,” Mike Baldwin, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, said of the meeting with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Federal Railroad Administration head Amit Bose, CNBC said in a report.
“Today’s meeting is an opportunity for labor to share what our members are seeing and dealing with day to day,” Baldwin said. “The railroaders’ labor represents … the employees who make it safe and they must have the tools to do so.”
The meeting comes after labor leaders claimed that workers at the site of the Norfolk Southern derailment have fallen ill with “migraines and nausea.”
“I have received reports that [Norfolk Southern] neither offered nor provided these workers with appropriate personal protective equipment, such as respirators that are designed to permit safely working around vinyl chloride, eye protection and protective clothing such as chemical retrain suits,” the American Rail System Federation wrote in a letter to Buttigieg obtained by CNBC.
“This lack of concern for the workers’ safety and well-being is, again, a basic tenet of NS’s cost-cutting business model,” the letter said.
The unions also wrote letters to East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, according to the outlet.
A Norfolk Southern spokesperson told the news outlet that the company “coordinated our response with hazardous material professionals who were on site continuously to ensure the work area was safe to enter and the required PPE was utilized.”
Earlier on Wednesday a group of bipartisan senators on Capitol Hill introduced The Railroad Safety Act of 2023, which proposes safety measures meant to prevent future environmental disasters like the Ohio derailment.
It’s unclear what impact the union meeting with national transportation officials will have.
Meanwhile, residents near the site of the derailment have also reported falling ill.
The Feb. 3 derailment forced the emergency evacuation of roughly 5,000 local residents, with the EPA later ordering Norfolk Southern to clean up its own mess.
Buttigieg has faced mounting criticism after he waited 10 days to make his first public statement about the disaster. He did not tour the site until Feb. 23, nearly three weeks later.
President Biden said last week he has no plans to visit the site.